Is there a way to get the field's value in advanced PDF, or in email templates, instead of the field's display text? I'm looking to make my templates easier to manage for multiple languages. The equivalent in suitescript would be record.getValue() instead of record.getText()

Instead of record.field, try record.field.id

I have, that did not work, it returned the internal ID of the record itself.

Ah I have had that problem before, too. This is the normal way to do what you're talking about, but it has that bug on some fields. Seems like it doesn't do it to all of them though. I can't quite remember how I overcame this bug last week though I might have resorted to adding a nonstored field that looks up the ID for me and referencing that in the PDF template. I thought I had found a more elegant solution than that, but that should work in the meantime until we think of that more elegant solution.

🤯 @Aaron McCausland @kennkerp thankyou! That solution combined with this thread seems to have done the trick!!! https://archive.netsuiteprofessionals.com/t/43981/hi-all-i-want-to-print-custom-pdf-template-in-customer-s-loc